


Premack's principle

by anonissue



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: "oh no! I'm turned on :(", Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, also blowjobs, and Nisha makes some jokes in terrible taste, butt stuff, for being a horrible human being, mild self-harm out of frustration, not compliant with borderlands timeline, of the rimming and fingering type, pre-established sexual relations, rhys blows up his first incendiary barrel, sex as a reward, vague D/s themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5506007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonissue/pseuds/anonissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nisha the Lawbringer and Rhys are tracking down some bandits who had the incredibly poor foresight to think they could get away with stealing from the Sheriff of Lynchwood. In the process of murdering, Nisha comes to realize Rhys has an aversion to guns and direct violence. She decides that gently encouraging and nurturing Rhys' successful and appropriate use of firearms is the best way to help him overcome said aversion.</p><p>Unfortunately, Nisha's definition of gentle and nurturing are the Pandoran standard versions, and Rhys is completely unprepared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Premack's principle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrelia/gifts).



> From Wikipedia: "Premack's principle suggests that if a person wants to perform a given activity, the person will perform a less desirable activity to get at the more desirable activity; that is, activities may themselves be reinforcers. An individual will be more motivated to perform a particular activity if they know that they will be able to partake of a more desirable activity as a consequence."
> 
> Unbeta'd (though if you want to help me by beta-ing my blands nonsense, hmu [at my tumblr](http://midgemong.tumblr.com) bruh)
> 
> This is ridiculous, and really without context or concept apart from the simple desire to see Nisha make a mess out of Rhys. I'm posting it here because I need more accountability for my porn, and I figure, maybe some positive reinforcement myself in order to write more (and get better at this whole thing). Only my second explicit fic, I know -- I'm working on making them less terrible. It's a process.
> 
> TLDR; I'm sorry everyone.

Rhys looks down at the pistol Nisha is pressing into his grip, and then back up at her.

  
"This is a terrible idea," Rhys explains as calmly as possible, panic drying his mouth to the point where he can physically feel his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth as he tries to talk. "I've never fired a gun."  


"Gotta pop your cherry sometime, pretty boy," and of course Nisha is grinning like a maniac which does stupid predictable things to his judgment. "Now's as good a time as any. These piles of skagshit are so incompetent at hitting anything they may as well be stationary targets at a range. Easy pickings, babe."  


Rhys musters up as much nerve as he can manage and reluctantly pokes his head out from behind the weapons crate he and Nisha have been using as cover. Easy Pickings manages to fire off a burst of bullets that do, in fact, miss him but also happen to explode right next to his left ear sending him ducking back down trying to shake off the sudden and deafening ringing shooting through his skull.  


"Can't you just blow them up?" Rhys knows he's yelling, but goddamn exploding ammo.  


"You don't need to be able to hear to shoot," Nisha shouts right back with a raised eyebrow, and gestures for Rhys to try again. "Go get 'em, killer."  


Rhys grinds his teeth, checks the safety on the Firehawk Nisha gave him one last time, and then pops up during the next pause in the seemingly endless hail of bullets aimed in their direction. There, behind a tent pole, he can see the back of the masked idiot who's managed to keep them pinned down crouched and in the middle of reloading. Rhys spreads his upper body over the top of the loot crate for added stability, sights down the pistol at the exposed ridge of the bandit's shoulder, and fires. His stomach lurches as the shot rings out, and his aim is wide. The noise the ricochet makes off the metal of the pole is enough to send his target ducking for better cover and call a bulkier mess of a henchman out from the tent. This one is making really worrisome noises, and if that somehow weren't enough of a tell, the milk pale skin and hatchet wobbling in his jittery grip are enough to make Rhys startle back and hiss:  


"Oh shit _shit_  a psycho, c'mon Nisha, just --"  


A firm grip on his hips, shoving him back into the crate and halting his hasty retreat downwards, stops Rhys mid-sentence. Nisha's mouth buzzes at the shell of his ear as she says, "ah _ah_ , Rhysie -- you gotta learn to follow through."  
  
The sensation is arresting, adrenaline fueling the goosebumps littering his skin, a shudder running through him. Rhys feels the need to giggle hysterically blooming in his chest. Of course Nisha would pick a time like this to fuck around. Of _course_.  


"You're not exactly helping," he manages not to gasp, Nisha's hips taking the place of her hands, pushing him forwards against the edge of the crate.  


"Multitask," Nisha mouths against his neck, sounding almost bored.  


The psycho sees them and screams in joy, winding himself up to sprint full speed ahead in their general direction. Her hands sweep along Rhys' arms, guiding his aim. "Sometimes, the universe delivers in your greatest time of need."  


It finally clicks for Rhys what she's trying to highlight in his field of vision -- there's an incendiary fuel barrel almost equidistant between the psycho charging at them and the bandit hidden behind cover. "And remember, aim smart," Nisha's smirk lacing through her words, suddenly dropping her hands to ruck up under Rhys' vest and shirt, nails biting into the soft flesh there as she drags welted lines down to just under his belt line. "Not _hard_."  


The sharp burning scrape of nails to his stomach causes Rhys to tense his abs almost involuntarily. Unintentionally, he finds his arms steadying out in counter-point, his gun barely drifting as a lone, harsh pant escapes him while pulling the trigger once, twice --  


The explosion is a bright, tinny thing, and goes off like a stick of dynamite in dumpster. The flaming carcass of the psycho is knocked forwards into the loot crate Rhys and Nisha are on, while the previously sheltered bandit is tripping over himself screaming, most of his body on fire. There's a giddy sort of rush that sweeps through Rhys' body as he surveys the damage -- he has to stop himself from laughing in wonder -- and then finally the thing struggling to die in front of him. The psycho does eventually stop moving, and Rhys comes down enough to reevaluate his own personal list of Top Five Ways He'd Rather Not Die with a startling sobriety, despite Nisha's triumphant crowing and casual manhandling.  


"If you wanted barbecue so badly, you just should've asked, pretty boy. Pretty sure the bullymong shack down by the tundra, shitty as it is, has better quality meat than this rakk-fodder."  


The hell of it is, Rhys has never been this close to burning flesh, and the barbecue comparison isn't... inaccurate. Rhys tries to glare over his shoulder at Nisha, instead of at the still-smoldering psycho in front of him.

"God, _really_?"

  
Nisha allows him a little leeway to move, and he looks at her grinning wolfishly behind him. They're still kneeling, she still has Rhys pretty much boxed in against the crate, plastered against his back, hands still under his shit, petting him. "It's almost as if their whole plan of attack went down in flames!"  


Rhys groans, burying his face in one palm, as Nisha laughs at her own terrible joke. His metal hand places the pistol down gingerly in front of him.  


"Can we please just get on with the job? Their claptrap unit barricaded itself in a dead room the second you starting shooting, and since their security's not hooked up to the ECHNOnet, it's going to take me longer to hack into their security system than I'd like."  


"Jeez, you're a grumpy grass spider," Nisha tutts. "Are you trying to tell me that blowing shit up didn't do anything for you at all? Because Rhysie," and there's a dangerous note now in her voice that raises hairs on the back of Rhys' neck. "I think I know you a little better than that."  


"It was... alright, I guess," Rhys tries to demur. Nisha bites him, and not gently, on the back of his neck for that.  


"Don't lie to me, pretty boy. I saw your face."  


She licks to sooth where she just bit, uncharacteristically nice of her Rhys notes, and tries to find his voice again.  


"It was loud," he manages, which isn't a lie. One ear is still ringing from the shots at them earlier, but the other -- he can hear, but everything sounds like it's wrapped up in wool and is coming from ten feet under water. Nisha hums against his bare neck, hands going from broad, possessive strokes, to a more pointed upwards exploration. She pulls her hands out from under his shirts, begins to undo his vest, then goes after his shirt buttons. Rhys darts a quick look around the camp, seemingly deserted, and breathes in to protest Nisha's timing despite not seeing any signs of movement, but she talks right over him like she can see his hesitance written in his skin.  


"I wanted to actually try something new. Positive reinforcement, when you do something _really_ good babe," Nisha purrs, nosing at his ear. "But for that, I need to be completely honest with me. And while the explosion was, thank you captain obvious, _loud_ , I think you know perfectly well that's not what I wanted you to tell me."  


Rhys braces himself on the metal of the crate in front of him, trying to keep his eyes anywhere but on the body just beyond his current line of sight.  


"I want you to tell me," Nisha continues, like she's speaking to a particularly slow child. "How it felt. To burn the bandits alive."  


Rhys can feel his face color in response to both her words and her tone. "This is a really not the place or time when there could be more of them coming to check on them soon -- _ah_."  


Nisha's biting him again, this time over the pulse point in his neck, slowly but inexorably increasing the pressure. Her hands have stopped undressing him to pinch viciously at his nipples from under his half-undressed shirts. Rhys looses his ability to speak for a moment, the only thing coming out of his mouth are small, undignified noises. His back arches back, pushing him further into Nisha behind him, and he lets his head loll against the metal under him. Rhys knows what she wants to hear, and it's the truth besides, is it so bad to admit --  


"It felt good," he hisses. "It felt fucking _fantastic_."  


And Rhys could just as easily be talking about her hands on him now, but his mind helpfully replays the panicked movements of the bandit trying to outrun his own body on fire, his screams, and there's a cruel and contented curl of satisfaction when he thinks its the same asshole who shot at him, who screwed up his hearing, and who helped steal the data their after from Nisha in the first place. Nothing about what Rhys is telling her now is untrue, not even with the displaced and contextually unpleasant smell of fried fat and burning skin filling his nostrils.  


"That's my good boy," Nisha coos, easing up on his neck and chest. Rhys screws his eyes shut at that, heat in his face crawling down his neck.  


Experimentally, she withdraws a hand to press at what feels like a button bruise already raised and tender where her teeth just were. It hurts, but coils something warm in Rhys' stomach, and makes him groan besides. "We'll make a vault hunter out of you yet."

  
She pushes at Rhys' hips with one hand, keeps the other wrapped around the back of his neck, fingers still digging into the welt. "Lean forwards, babe, on your elbows, ass-up."  


Rhys does it, slides his stomach further forwards, his whole body further towards the evidence of what he did, bracing on his elbows, tilting his hips up. He still can't look at smoking corpse, so he opts to stare back down the line of his own body instead, watching Nisha's hands work. She makes quick work of his belt and pants, isn't careful with her fingers, nails once again scratching lines into his ass and thighs making him buck thoughtlessly. Nisha smacks him hard, once on each asscheek, in warning. "Be a doll, and stay still, Rhys."  


" _Shit_ ," Rhys lets slip before he bites his lip, feeling the same sort of hysterical giggle that threatened to surface earlier climb its way up his throat.  
His completely inappropriate responses to pain and danger, while a quality Nisha much appreciated in him, still had the capacity to make Rhys feel deeply uncomfortable. Though apparently not uncomfortable enough to impair physical responses to Nisha's ministrations.  
  
"Mama only likes a moving target when she's killing things," he hears Nisha grumble quietly, mostly to herself as she pulls his underwear to his ankles.  


Rhys has a view of his own half-hard cock lolling to slap against his thigh, of Nisha settling on her in behind him. She sees him watching her, and meets his gaze. She looks almost cheerful, Rhys realizes, which would worry him almost more than the lingering fear that a second wave of bandits might file down from the camp's high ground any minute, except of course that's the exact moment Nisha moves forwards, palming his ass, and spreading him slightly.  
  
Her face disappears from view, but the spoken, "Positive reinforcement, pretty boy. Let me know if it works for you, mmkay?" which is accompanied by a gust of hot air right over his entrance, and then followed up by what Rhys brain helpfully processes is Nisha's tongue licking at him a minute too slow to do anything other than gasp, "Wait, _wait_   _Nisha_ \--" lets him know exactly where she is and what she plans to do to him.  


She works at him for a moments, teasing at his bare ass, not doing much else for him other than getting him unbearably slick, hints of pressure where he wants more, where he wants her opening him up with fingers, mouth, anything -- really -- the longer this continues. Rhys is no longer half-hard; he watches dick stretch and fill under Nisha's ministrations, the wet-looking head tapping against his stomach now with every half-aborted attempt Rhys makes to push himself back further onto Nisha, as if grinding against her face would make her go any faster when she told him not to move. Nisha, for her part, just keeps him spread, digging her fingers into the meat of his ass hard enough to ache, to the point where Rhys knows there'll be finger-point bruises tomorrow, and licks -- slow drags of wet heat over where he can feel himself spasming. Every few passes, she lingers, flickering over him, pushing in with enough force where he thinks finally, _finally_ \-- but every time, she makes an amused-sounding noise and resumes her teasing as if they're not in the middle of the god-forsaken desert, as if there aren't bodies littered around them.  


Rhys is just trying to breathe through this, but his breath catches on a truly embarrassing sound that manages to escape him on a whine, and that's when he has to look away, look anywhere other than at his own dick, leaking, and the line of Nisha's neck, where he can see evidence of her mouth working against him. His eyes settle on a part of the mess in front of him that's no longer identifiable as human, and Rhys lets his eyes lose focus, tries to concentrate on evening out his breathing, on not screaming in frustration.  


"Hey," Nisha finally says, breaking away from her ministrations. "I could use a hand here, hon. Spread yourself for me."  


Rhys lets his shoulders drop heavy on the crate in his rush to comply, and the resulting pain barely registers, although the sight of his thoughtless scrambles causes Nisha to snort. Rhys pulls himself as wide as he can manage, resting his face sideways against the rusted metal and chipping red paint. "Eager, hmm?"  


Rhys can't see her face from this angle, but he can imagine the crooked grin he hears in her voice. For a few seconds, there's nothing, and Rhys wonders if she expects him to say anything, but then there's the slow push of two fingers, slicked with spit, just up to the second knuckle. She scissors them, methodically trying to loosen up his ass without actually providing him with useful stimulation. The burn cuts through his frustration, though, gives him something to concentrate on for a minute. He feels himself relax a little, Nisha's unoccupied hand tracing patterns against his lower back. She withdraws as the pain fades to an achy stretch, hand patting his back with an odd sort of finality.  


"You know, maybe you're right, though, Rhys."  


"Huh?" He manages, barely able to make himself intelligible.  


"I mean, as fun as this is," and Nisha pauses to push a single, solid finger all the way in, curling with intent until she finds what she's looking for, making Rhys shout, his hips pushing into the pressure she's providing. She withdraws all together, just as a suddenly, and continues to speak, a thoughtful lilt to her voice that sounds much too self-satisfied to be genuine. "Your concern about the possibility of more bandits does warrant _careful_ consideration. It may be the smarter play to wait until we're done here to finish giving you your reward for getting over your reluctance to use firearms."  


Rhys lies there, hands still on his ass, his jaw working trying to think of something to say that isn't, "Nisha. Nisha please." Which makes it, strangled but whole, surprisingly steadily out of his mouth anyway.  


"I mean, safety first. Wouldn't want you to get shot in your pretty little face."  


Rhys wants to scream, feels his face twisting. Doesn't, though. Petulance never works with Nisha. Does, however, knock his face into the hard metal, once, twice -- trying to clear the fog of need and whatever keyed up thing has had him running on a high wire since he'd put two rounds into the barrel and washed the camp with fire. Tries for a third time, before Nisha is carding a hand through his hair, yanking him down against the metal, eliminating his leverage. He moans low, can't help it. Rhys can't even make himself take his hands from where they're digging into the flesh of his thighs.  


"Boy, kiddo, you gotta work on a better way of asking for what you need," Nisha says, pushing her face to his, her features carefully blank, voice neutral. "Only one person has the right to hurt you as they please, and that's me."  


"Nisha, I _can't_ \--"  


"Yes you can," she interrupts calmly. "I know you know how to use your words."  


Rhys shudders, closes his eyes, can't keep looking at Nisha, not with whatever this tension is pulling him tight down onto himself. " _Please_ ," he tries again, his own voice strange and strained to his ears.  


"Please what?" Nisha insists, one hand still steady in his hair, the other idly tracing the column of his neck, lingering on the articulation of his windpipe, pressing down briefly with no real intent.  


"I don't give a fuck about the bandits Nisha, I need you --" Rhys stutters, half-babbling, words running together. He holds onto the fleeting feeling of her touch by trying to push into her hands. "Oh, I need you to put me back together, please _please_ \--"  


"Hush, baby, all you had to do was ask," she gentles him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "Let's get you taken care of, hmm?"  


Despite all that, Rhys still isn't fully prepared for the return of Nisha's tongue. He jerks and shudders under her touch, mewls when she uses her fingers to open him up enough to actually fuck into him wet and slick, as deep as she can get with her mouth. The sensation consumes him, adding to his fever. A gun pressed to his head at this point couldn't keep him from trying to encourage Nisha to give him more, more -- chasing after anything that might crack him open. He wonders, in a brief moment of startling clarity, if shooting things will always wind him up like this, and god but wouldn't that make him an entirely different kind of useless around guns. Rhys wants to laugh, but it comes out as a hitching sob. Nisha growls against him, pulling away, and dragging her mouth down over his balls, then breaking away and switching positions so fluidly his cock is her mouth, fingers in his ass replacing her tongue before it even occurs to him to protest the loss of her mouth on his ass.  


It takes an embarrassingly short time for Rhys to come after that, three fingers in his ass, thrusting blindly between the intrusion there and the wet heat of Nisha's throat and tongue, the slight catch of her teeth finally setting him off as he curls on himself uncontrollably. Rhys is pretty sure he makes an incriminating amount of noise, but he can't hear himself over the sound of his own blood at the earlier noise injury to his ears.  


He's still panting as Nisha gets up wiping at her mouth, and she resorts to finally pulling at him when he lies on top of the crate boneless for too long.  


"Get your heavy ass up," she grouses at Rhys. "As wonderful as it was to watch you come apart so prettily --"  


And Rhys supposes she catches him rolling his eyes at that as he gets to his feet and starts to pull up his pants, breathing still uneven, because Nisha stops talking to grab either side of his face. She meets his eyes, briefly, before attacking his mouth with teeth and tongue in something Rhys imagines once resembled a kiss. When he can't help but notice how thoroughly she tastes of him, light-headed again and half-stumbling, he groans. Nisha takes that as her cue to pull back, nipping briefly at his lower lip.  


"And believe me, kid, you were _wonderful_ ," she says, surprisingly earnest, stroking at Rhys cheekbones until he feels himself blush from the attention and the praise. "We do still have more murdering to do."  


Nisha pats Rhys on the cheek, and he snorts. "You mean you still have murdering to do. I'm gonna start running recon on their defense subsystems."  


"Ah, ah, _ah_ , pretty boy," Nisha scolds lightly, picking up the Maliwan pistol and tucking it into the waistband of Rhys' suit.  


The metal sliding against his lower back provokes a reaction Rhys tries to suppress as Nisha saunters away from him grinning, reloading her own weapons.  


"I believe this belongs to you now, and you better be up there covering my back."


End file.
